In the agricultural industry, sprayers provide liquid nutrients, fertilizer, herbicides, and water to plants, crops, trees, and other vegetation. Sometimes too much liquid is sprayed and the crops may grow poorly or even drown from root rot. If there is insufficient spraying, the crops may not mature, the yield is lower, and money, time and resources are again wasted. Also, if a chemical may have harmful consequences, then over-spraying may create more harm, plus money is wasted in paying for extra chemicals. Other variables include vehicle speed, wind and spray drift effects that may cause the spray to drift past the boundaries of the field and land on neighboring crops or houses.
Nozzles may be either continuous spray or pulse mode spray so that the spray pattern on the ground may not be the same, but both modes of spraying can generate uneven spray patterns on the ground. The controller system for the fluid may release the fluid continuously or send periodic signals such as a pulse-width modulated (PWM) signal to release the fluid. In many settings, not just a single but multiple nozzles are used together. Sprayer systems have multiple nozzle bodies or outlets to apply liquids over a large or intricate surface area. Sometimes the activity of more than one hundred nozzles is coordinated, which makes PWM control complex.
Instead of liquids being sprayed, granular solid fertilizer or other chemicals may also be sprayed (broadcasted) out of long nozzle tubes onto the ground. The wind or vehicle travel speed may be such that finer grains of solid fertilizer or other chemicals would swirl and drift and may behave similarly to liquid droplets.